


First to Show Their Face Back Home Wins the Pool

by greenglowsgold



Category: Glee
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, also the puckurt is preslash, ignore everything after season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-08
Updated: 2014-02-08
Packaged: 2018-01-11 14:02:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1173926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenglowsgold/pseuds/greenglowsgold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Admitting you like guys to the one you used to mess with for being gay in high school is awkward enough without being surrounded by rainbow flags and balloons at the time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First to Show Their Face Back Home Wins the Pool

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pterawaters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pterawaters/gifts).



> A (late sorry sorry) birthday gift for Pterawaters, who asked for the boys to meet up after high school. I'm sorry there's a weird amount of Puck/OMC in this, idk. *shrug*

Coming out, as it happened, was more exhausting than terrifying. Telling his family had been uneventful, telling Finn had been confusing (he’d had to explain ‘pansexual’ more than once), telling his first boyfriend had been all but unnecessary, and at some point, Puck cut himself a break because he knew way too many people and it wasn’t any of their business. He could picture the rest: his boss wouldn’t need to know, his friends from high school wouldn’t be affected unless his date to the next reunion was a man, and his roommate would figure it out for himself soon enough. Telling Kurt Hummel, the guy he used to toss around for the same sort of shit Puck got up to on the regular these days, would just be embarrassing. And yeah, he’d thought about it, ‘cause he figured he only had so long of a grace period before Finn let something slip to his brother.

As embarrassing as that conversation would have been, though, Puck was suddenly sure that it would have been a thousand times more bearable than running into Kurt as a freaking Pride event. And if there were any doubt as to why he was here, it would be instantly erased by the presence of Puck’s current boyfriend (well, summer fling really, but a man either way) clutching tightly to his arm. Damnit, but this was _so_ not the place to do this. Kurt hadn’t actually seen him yet, so maybe Puck could just edge to the side…

“Puck?”

Fuck, no, fuck, fuck. They were in the middle of a huge, excited, cheering crowd, Puck reminded himself. They wouldn’t talk long. He shoved a smile onto his face. “Hey, Kurt.”

Kurt looked genuinely pleased to see him, which kind of made Puck feel like crap for his first reaction being to avoid him. “Hey,” Kurt replied with a bright smile. “How are you? It’s been…” He trailed off, trying to remember just how long, and his eyes wandered.

Puck could see the exact moment that Kurt figured it out, gaze flickering over the hand he had linked with Seth’s and back to Puck’s face, and the silence stretched a moment longer. “Years, yeah,” Puck said, a little desperately, hoping that if he finished Kurt’s sentence, they could get the conversation back on a track that didn’t point him out as an incredible hypocrite.

Luckily, Kurt went with it. “I guess that’s what reunions are for. Except…”

“I didn’t go,” Puck finished, sheepishly running a hand over the back of his neck.

Kurt laughed lightly. “You neither?”

“Noah?” Seth finally broke in, stepping a little closer to curl possessively around Puck (who barely held himself back from rolling his eyes; Seth was only in Los Angeles for a summer internship, so it wasn’t like they didn’t know there was an end date on this thing). “Who’s this?”

Kurt had looked at Seth when he spoke, but his eyes caught Puck’s again a moment later, and he mouthed, ‘Noah?’ He was clearly far too amused by this, eyebrows high on his forehead and lip twitching up. Puck winced; yeah, things got weird after high school, when people insisted on using his legal name for _everything_ (even when he told them not to), and he still wasn’t sure about it all. He shook his head discreetly: no, he didn’t want Kurt to call him that.

“This is Kurt,” he told Seth quickly. “We went to high school together.” Then, to Kurt, “What are you doing in California?” Oh, boy, please don’t let Kurt have moved out here while Puck wasn’t looking, because he would have no excuse for not knowing about that when he talked to Finn on a weekly basis.

“I’m just here for a few days.” Puck let out a little breath of relief; at least he wasn’t completely oblivious, just out of touch. “Visiting Mercedes. She’s not here,” he added as Puck started and scanned the crowd for another familiar face. “She did mention that she hadn’t hear from you lately.”

Puck cleared his throat, trying not to wonder whether that meant Kurt had asked after him. “Yeah, well… Yeah.” Smooth.

It was probably the awkward silence that followed which convinced Seth he was safe enough to leave them alone, and he excused himself to catch up with a friend from his internship who’d just texted him. Puck wasn’t sure if he was pleased by the trust, or just pissed because Seth was a fucking traitor who’d left him alone to have the turns-out-I’m-a-little-bit-gay talk without even a boyfriend for backup. Yeah, actually; the second one.

“So,” Kurt said finally. “The reunion?”

“The what?”

“Reunion,” Kurt repeated. “You said you didn’t go. And Mercedes hasn’t talked to you lately, or Rachel, and even Finn won’t tell me much.”

Puck felt the corners of his mouth twitch up against his will. So Kurt _had_ asked after him, then. “I would’ve,” he said. “Only, reunions are supposed to be about everyone catching up and finding out all the awesome stuff we did after high school, and…”

Kurt’s eyebrows drew together. “This?” he asked, gesturing around them at the rainbow-colored decorations.

 _This_. There it was. “No, actually. Really,” he said, when Kurt didn’t look entirely sure he believed that. “I mean, that’s… yeah, but I’m cool with it. Finn knows. I’m surprised he didn’t let something slip to you by now, actually.”

Kurt huffed a sigh, smiling a little as he shook his head. “It works to his benefit that we don’t live in the same city, now.”

“Yeah,” Puck agreed. “That might do it. But, uh, no; _this_ —” a gesture at their surroundings, mirroring Kurt’s “—is all good. It’s just, I’m in school now, right? The year I got the reunion notice was actually the first one I was taking classes, and I’m still only partway through. And I got a job, but it’s not what I wanna do, and I didn’t have anyone to bring with me, and things just aren’t… together, you know?”

A nod. “Makes sense. Maybe they should have set the first reunion for farther out than five years.”

Having said his bit, Puck chose not to let it lie. He spotted a bench off to the side, tugged on Kurt’s arm until he joined him in striding over and taking up the half not already occupied by a lesbian couple celebrating very publically. The movement diverted the conversation for a minute, and he might have gotten away with it, had he not chosen that exact moment to become a masochist. “So, doesn’t _this_ , I dunno, surprise you at all?” Fucking hell.

Unexpectedly, Kurt didn’t take the opportunity he’d been given, but only smiled at Puck, a little knowingly and a little barely-contained, like he knew Puck would take it the wrong way if he laughed (which, Puck definitely would). “How much do you remember of that day we all took Vitamin D, anyway?”

Puck’s eyes widened. “Oh. _Oh_. I thought—” That it was a dream, or a hallucination, or that Kurt didn’t remember it at _least_ , because there was no way he would kept quiet about it if he had. “So, that was a thing that one hundred percent went down, then.”

“I had my doubts, too, but I couldn’t think what else would have left that sort of mark on my neck.” Kurt grinned wider at that, and didn’t blush at all, miles away from what Puck would have imagined in high school.

“God,” Puck laughed breathlessly, more than a little goddamn embarrassed, not that he’d done it, but more that he’d put it so effectively out of his mind. “And then you didn’t mention it for three years.”

“You were different then,” Kurt said with a shrug. Jesus, but Puck hoped he was different _now_. (Did it count as a missed opportunity if it never would have gone anywhere without pharmaceuticals to back it up?)

It takes Puck an extra minute to realize that was it; that was the conversation he’d been dreading. So what did he talk about now? “So, reunion?” he asked, instead of thinking of anything better.

“Hmm?”

“Reunion,” he repeated, and caught the moment Kurt realized he was being teased. “I told you mine; what’s yours? Life not perfect enough for that grand entrance, yet?”

“Actually, it’s…” Kurt bit his lip lightly (well, goddamn), and ran a hand over his knee. “Okay, this is going to sound like bragging, and, what the hell, it kind of is, but honestly, things are great. No, y’know, billboards on Broadway just yet, but smaller things, yeah. And I had someone.”

Puck’s eyebrow quirked up at ‘had.’

“Don’t ask,” Kurt said, rolling his eyes. “And, what about you?” He jerked his head in the direction Seth had disappeared minutes ago.

“He’s got a ten week internship,” Puck shrugged. “He’s cool, but not…”

“Mm,” Kurt hummed. “Yeah, got it. But no, seriously, I could have done it. I was going to do it. But then I thought, why the hell should I? The whole point of it was supposed to be that I didn’t care what any of them thought, but if that were true, why go at all? It just doesn’t seem important anymore. I don’t have to prove anything.”

Puck considered that for a moment. “Huh.”

“Yeah.” Kurt let them sit in the quiet for a moment, staring at the multicolored people moving past. “You don’t either, by the way.”

Puck was kind of sure he did, but whatever.

“So what are you studying?” Kurt asked, then.

Oh, yeah. Puck offered Kurt a wide grin. “Math.”

“Oh, _God_ ,” Kurt moaned. “Forget I asked.”

Puck laughed at the expression on Kurt’s face until he was nearly bent over where he sat. When he finally wiped tears away from his eyes and looked up again, Seth was standing over him, back from whatever friend he’d been with. Puck scooted over in his seat to make room for Seth to sit beside him, knees knocking into Kurt’s in the process.

“Hey,” Seth greeted, leaving a quick kiss on the side of Puck’s head. Puck grinned; the spirit in the air was getting to them. Or maybe it was the lesbians still going at it a foot away.

Kurt cleared his throat. “Well, I have to go.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, and Puck thought that maybe Mercedes _was_ here, if not actually _here_. “I’m only here for a couple more days, but… Here, give me your number.”

Without knowing precisely why he was agreeing so easily, Puck handed his phone over, and Kurt messed with it for a minute before handing it back and waving as he disappeared into the crowd. It was so sudden that Puck felt a little whiplashed. He’d changed up his phone a couple years ago and been very careful about who got his new number. The only ones from New Directions who’d been granted the knowledge were Finn and Santana. And now, Kurt.

Seth shifted beside him, loosening his grip on Puck’s arm and making an obvious attempt at casual. “So… you’re meeting him for lunch, or…?”

“Don’t worry,” Puck assured him with a short shake of his head. “If there’s one guy around here I would never stand a chance with, it’s him.” Unless they were drugged, apparently, but that seemed an unlikely situation to come up again.

Seth’s gaze softened a bit. “History?”

Puck laughed ruefully. “Not the kind to be jealous of. I was kind of an asshole in high school.”

Seth didn’t tell him he was wrong. This was one of the things Puck really liked about Seth; he didn’t try to bullshit you over stuff he didn’t know enough about. He just shrugged and said, “Well, you’re not an asshole now.”

“Wow, feel the love,” Puck said, mostly just because. “Seriously though, he’s my best friend’s brother, is all. We’re kind of obligated to keep up a little. Bet you ten bucks we go another few years without talking after this.” Unless Finn got married, or something.

“Sure, sure,” Seth said, taking a step back and running a critical eye over Puck’s body. “Hmm, never, though? I don’t know, Noah; I think your biceps alone could convince him.”

“Hell yeah,” came from somewhere nearby, a guy who threw them a salute and a wink as he walked past. He was gone in an instant, and Puck couldn’t help but burst into laughter, pulling Seth back toward him and slinging an arm ‘round his shoulders.

Damn, but he loved LA.

\---

Four months later, he realized that however awkward he’d thought the coming out conversation would be, the so-I-kinda-like-you-in-a-mouth-touching-sorta-way-even-though-our-mouths-can’t-actually-touch-cause-of-the-distance-but-it-turns-out-I’m-cool-with-that conversation was destined to be infinitely worse. Especially since, even though they’d been talking almost daily lately, he hadn’t found the nerve to make it an actual conversation, per say, but rather sent it as a message. On Facebook. Because, as it happened, Puck was a _moron_.

It was still awesome, he thought, when he got a notification and pulled open Skype to find Kurt smiling shyly from the screen. This whole thing was going to be stupidly, pathetically awesome.  And hey, check it out: this time they weren’t even high.


End file.
